The folded symphony has $327,000 worth of stuff and $4 million in liabilities.

M&T Bank, the biggest secured creditor, is likely to get everything, leaving nothing for the hundreds of unpaid vendors and staff and people who bought concert tickets they could not use.

“I’m very sorry,” trustee Mary Fangio said at the creditors hearing Wednesday afternoon in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Syracuse.

In the court, Philip MacArthur and Bill Harris were thinking about how to keep the SSO’s library of sheet music. They are musicians, MacArthur on the oboe, and Harris, on the trombone, who retired and now lead the union that represents the musicians’ contract with the SSO. With their colleagues, they made a career’s worth of hand-written notes on the sheet music they say can never be replaced.

“I was a sophomore at SU when I started,” Harris said. “It’s like watching 50 years flush.”

A stopwatch is ticking on the future of the sheet music, as well as the $55,000 Steinway piano, a $12,000 celeste piano and $40,000 in drums, chimes, cymbals and other percussion instruments.

M&T Bank has already filed paperwork asking the court to turn over all of the SSO’s assets. A hearing is set for 10 a.m. July 14.

The bank will want to sell the assets quickly to recoup the $545,000 it loaned the orchestra.

It is possible for the bank to sell the music library and instruments together to a new start-up orchestra here. So far, however, the unemployed musicians who played for the old SSO are in no position to buy the tools of their trade back from the bank.

Immediately after they were laid off, the musicians banded together to keep a presence on stage for the short term. The former SSO musicians filed the paperwork to form a new group called Symphony Syracuse and announced eight concerts for a summer season, including the traditional July 4 concert at the New York State Fairgrounds.

But it is hard to have a quick turnaround unless someone suddenly shows up with $1 million, MacArthur said.

“We do not have the power to make symphony music just because we want to,” MacArthur said outside the federal courthouse, disappointed that the union’s lawyer did not make it to the creditors’ hearing because of a delayed flight.

The musicians are getting help from the national union, the American Federation of Musicians and the AFL-CIO has granted money to help orchestras around the country in bankruptcy proceedings. With that grant, the AFM has retained Jennifer Garner, a Dallas bankruptcy attorney and violin player, who was en route to Syracuse.

Other creditors came to ask Paul Brooks, the SSO’s former interim executive director, questions. He repeated the recent narrative about the symphony’s fundraising efforts, negotiations with the union and how they could not longer make payroll. Brooks said the SSO started the season with a deficit, but had every reason to think it could raise enough money to finish it.

Instead, the SSO canceled the rest of what was supposed to be its 50th anniversary season and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May.

There are 559 unsecured creditors, ranging from a $2.7 million debt to the musicians’ pension fund to $20 tickets for canceled concerts.

A Watertown resident who bought four tickets for $500 to a special Yo-Yo Ma concert drove to Syracuse for the creditors meeting. She had appealed the charge with her credit card company and was credited for the amount of the tickets.

But the young woman, who declined to be identified, still took the day off from her job to be present for the hearing. “I’m curious to see what’s going on,” she said.

Fangio, the court-appointed trustee, said it did not appear that there would be enough money to refund ticketholders.